Wisdom for B2C Market Researchers

By Jerry Rackley

Demand Metric recently took a briefing from the product management team at MicroStrategy about their social intelligence solution, Wisdom Professional. After viewing it, we felt strongly that it was a solution that will have tremendous appeal to our members that do B2C market research, and we’ve published a Vendor Solution Profile that provides more insight on this solution.

MicroStrategy, a business intelligence solution provider, announced Wisdom in July 2012. It is a SaaS solution that gives us a window into what is the largest single database of consumer preferences in the world: Facebook. Facebook users voluntarily, even enthusiastically, express “Likes” and preferences for their favorite companies, brands and products. If you’ve ever dreamed of having access to this data, then you’ll quickly gain an appreciation for the potential of Wisdom.

Companies have a Facebook presence to exploit its value as a marketing channel, but until now, that presence hasn’t provided much in the way of actionable business intelligence. That’s because having a Facebook page offers virtually no information about your fans’ “Likes” other than that they like you. Wisdom provides a way to find out the likes and activities of your fans, and any other demographic information represented in Facebook. This means that this solution essentially functions as a virtual focus group, available on demand to which you can ask an unlimited number of questions and get immediate responses.

When I saw Wisdom demonstrated, one of my first questions was, “how does it have access to all that Facebook data?”  Is it creeping the profiles of every Facebook user on the planet? In fact, Facebook users opt-in to Wisdom, the draw being the ability to use it as a business intelligence/analytics tool for your personal Facebook network of friends. It appears the strategy is working; at the time of this post, Wisdom has over 16.1 million Facebook users in its community and is currently adding about 200,000 new members each week.

Wisdom has the ability to streamline the B2C market research process while improving the quality of the insights gained through that process. Download the Vendor Solution Profile to learn more about gaining consumer insights that are either impossible or very expensive to derive through other means.